The Reality of Being Quotes

“I have to see that the thought “I” is the greatest obstacle to consciousness of myself. Everything I know through my senses has a name. I am encumbered by names, which become more important than the things themselves. I name myself “I,” and in doing it as if I knew myself, I am accepting a thought that keeps me in ignorance. If I learn to separate myself from names, from thoughts, little by little I will come to know the nature of the mind and lift the veil it casts over me.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“If he withdraws into the higher part, he is distant from his manifestations and can no longer evaluate them; he no longer knows or experiences his animal nature. If he slides into the other nature, he forgets everything that is not animal, and there is nothing to resist it; he is animal . . . not man. The animal always refuses the angel. The angel turns away from the animal. A conscious man is one who is always vigilant, always watchful, who remembers himself in both directions and has his two natures always confronted.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“What is too often missing is knowing what I want. And it is this that undermines my will to work. Without knowing what I want, I will not make any effort. I will sleep. Without wishing for a different quality in myself, to turn toward my higher possibilities, I will have nothing to lean on, nothing to support work. I must always, again and again, come back to this question: What do I wish?”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“How to understand the experience of feeling? We know what sensing is, an inner touch. Feeling requires another quality. It has nothing to do with “like” or “dislike,” and yet it is emotion. I feel sorrow or joy. Feeling is always rising up. Like fire it flares up, then dies away. And I feel “I am.” Pure feeling has no object. I can understand it only if I am capable of seeing without an idea, word or image, able to be in contact with what is. I begin to see that the world in which I live is a world of fictions. It is not real. The vision I have of myself is not a vision of my own reality. I see myself through the thinking, lost in my imagination of “I.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“There is no stairway to climb. I have to leap. To become conscious I must let go of all that is known. Really knowing is a state in which everything is observed, experienced, understood and—because it is unable to serve in the following moment—abandoned as useless.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“We are under the domination of our thinking mind. This is our slavery.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Solitude from what is ordinary, imaginary and false is something very great. It means that for the first time I know that “I am.” It is a solitude from all the known and from all that is not right now, in the present moment outside of time. This solitude appears as a void. But it is not a void of despair. It is a complete transformation of the quality of my thinking. When the mind is free of all talking, fears, desires and pettiness, it is silent. Then comes a sense of complete nothingness, the very essence of humility. At the same time, there is a feeling of truly entering another world, a world that seems more real. I am a particle of a greater reality. I experience solitude not because something is missing but because there is everything—everything is here.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“We do not understand the moment of receiving an impression and why it is so important. We need to be present because it is the shock of the impression that drives us. If there is nobody here at the moment an impression is received, I react automatically, blindly, passively, and I am lost in the reaction.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“As I try to remember myself, I see where my wish comes from. It is from my ordinary “I.” So long as the impulse comes from the possessiveness at the core of my personality, it will not bring the freedom necessary for a perception that is direct. When I see this . . . I have the impression of being a little freer. . . . But I wish to keep this freedom, and the way I wish comes again from possessiveness. It is like finding freedom from the influence only to fall back under it again, as though following a movement inward toward the more real and then a movement outward away from the real. If I am able to observe and live this, I will see that these two movements are not separate. They are one and the same process. And I need to feel them like the ebb and flow of a tide, with a keen attention that does not let itself be carried away and that, by its vision, keeps a balance.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Our true nature, an unknown that cannot be named because it has no form, can be sensed in the stop between two thoughts or two perceptions. These moments of stop constitute an opening to a Presence that is without end, eternal.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Each act, everything we do—working with wood or stone, making a meal or a work of art, or thinking—can be either automatic or a creation. In my habitual state I always proceed by repetition.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Consciousness of self as one is, without theories or conclusions, is meditation. When our thoughts and feelings blossom and die, we enter another sphere.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“It is attention that gives the capacity to see.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Attention is the conscious force, the force of consciousness. It is a divine force.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“When the mind is without provocation or response, there is “abandonment.” Only in this state can we find the real.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Attention is the essential energy in man. And this energy can only appear when one is constantly occupied in seeing, in listening, in questioning—never in knowing with my thinking mind. We must give our complete attention to the question in front of us. The attention will not be total if we seek an answer. Total attention is the process of meditation.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Truth simply cannot be thought.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Usually I look to the attitude of others in order to be convinced of my being. If they reject or ignore me, I doubt myself. If they accept me, I believe in myself.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“I believe I need to pay attention when, in fact, I need to see and know my inattention.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“What is important is to see that words and ideas enslave us in formulas and concepts. As long as we are trapped in a net of consoling belief, we lack the intensity and subtlety required for real exploration. Unless I understand this, my observation will remain based on forms, on what I know, and will not be enlivened by the spirit of discovery, as if for the first time. And it will be egocentric, with my ordinary “I” interpreting everything that is presented from its self-centered perspective.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“I am writing a book on how to be in life, on the path to take in order to live on two levels. It will show how to find a balance, to go from one to the other, or rather to find the way in between. We have to see beyond, and through, our ordinary thinking in order to open to another mind. Otherwise, we remain at the threshold in front of the door, and the door does not open.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“The passion we need is the passion to be.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“The highest form of intelligence is meditation, an intense vigilance that liberates the mind from its reactions, and this alone, without any willful intervention, produces a state of tranquillity.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“To see without thought is the discovery of reality.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“No thought lasts; what appears must disappear. The disappearing is as important as the appearing.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Reality has no continuity. It is beyond time, outside duration.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Our experience of suffering is never voluntary. It is mechanical, a reaction of the machine. What is voluntary is to place oneself in conditions that bring about suffering and to stay in front. A conscious man no longer suffers—in consciousness one is happy. But suffering thus prepared is indispensable for transformation.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“With conscious will, everything can be obtained.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“Only a voluntary force can liberate me from the power of an involuntary force.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff

“My body is the first to refuse. It knows nothing of my wish and lives a life of its own.”
― Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff